More number crunching...

political and not.

100,000 = Huge Crowd

100,000 people is definitely a huge crowd in some circles. Way more people than would have fit in our home for the wife's baby shower last weekend. But in other arenas, is 100k really all that much?

The big anti-war demonstration "descended" on Washington this past weekend. Estimates are that 100,000 people were in attendance. It can't be said, however, that all 100,000 of the attendees were pro-Sheehan, anti-war activists. There happens to be a fair contingent of the "You don't talk for me, Cindy" crowd, which consists mainly of a lot of parents of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a crowd from the anti-anti-war people who are just damn sick and tired of the anti-war peeps and their continual whining.

Protestor Robert Fox from Miami, Florida, was quoted as saying:

"Whether [Mr. Bush] listens or not, it doesn't really matter. We just need to show all of America that there's a very large group of people that don't agree with his policies."

Fox, and his wife Vilma, had attended an anti-war protest in 2003, and noted that

"The mood of the country has definitely started to swing the other way."

Number crunching time: 100,000 divided into 296,000,000 = 0.0033%

I'm glad to note that 0.0033% of the nation's population can start the "winds of change" blowing across the political landscape, and that it can swing the mood of the entire country. If 0.0033% can accomplish that, and "change congress in 2006, and take back the White House in 2008" (quote - Rev. Jesse Jackson), then I'm sure that when I tell my employer that roughly 5% of the company agrees that my wage should be doubled, he'll have no choice but to agree and immediately make the change.

Free Gas

Tesoro Gas stations here in Utah are running a promotion. When you sign up for their "advantage" card (or whatever they call it), you can get free gas. Here's how it works: You get a card that can hold 24 stamps on it. You get a single stamp for each time you fill up with 8 or more gallons. When you accrue 24 stamps on your card, you are awarded with up to $5.00 in free gas. Yay!!

Number crunching time: 8 gallons times $2.79 per gallon times 24 fill-ups = $535.68

You get $5.00 in free gas for spending over 107 times that amount in purchasing gas from their company! Sounds like an unbeatable deal to me! That reward translates out to 0.0093% of what you put into it, which isn't much, but is roughly the equivalent of 300,000 people descending on Washington for political reasons, turning the "winds of change" into a Category 5 hurricane that would effectively obliterate all political structure in the United States and Europe. Wait, this is a separate number crunching! How the hell did politics drift into this paragraph?

Okay. 0.0093% must be a better deal than my 3% Discover Card. And spending $23.04 less on the same amount of gas at Costco certainly isn't quite the same as getting $5.00 in free gas. So where do I sign up? Do I need proof of lobotomy?